Feb 15, 2017

How do they know who to kill?

A video is doing the rounds, in which a white person with a lifetime of male
socialisation behind them – in other words, someone at the apex of human
privilege – gives great fanfare to the banal observation that science is an
activity rather than a phenomenon and that classification is the imposition of
more-or-less imperfect linguistic concepts on a more-or-less well understood
underlying physical reality. On the basis of this stoned undergrad level of
profundity, this person now exhorts us to lay aside our childish attachment to
the classifications “male” and “female” and admit that, given that sex is a
“social construct”, then it’s just frankly not real, and our attachment to
those categories is an old fashioned piece of bigotry that oppresses the
minority who wish it to be known that their sex tracks their gender.

There are several rejoinders that it is immediately tempting
to make to this muddle-headed claim. For example, one could pat the young
person on the head and reassure them that very few people today are such
through-going Platonists that they go about their days imagining that our
language described immutable categories based on underlying metaphysical Truth.
Or one could remind them that money is a social construct, too, but claiming that makes it unreal
wouldn’t help you at the till in the supermarket, haha. Or that “trans” come
from “transition”, and if there is no sex with which the gender of the person
is misaligned, then in what sense are they transitioning, and from what to what? And of course there's the perennial problem that saying "I don't judge gender by physique" is to feminism what "I don't see colour" is to racism (the latter is also based, by the way, on the sound observation that race has no underlying biological basis, first made to delegitimise so called "scientific" racism).

Good, if well worn arguments, but none of them is the one I want
to make today. Here is why I reject, with the greatest level of rhetorical
emphasis words can lend me, the self-serving pretence that sex is a meaningless
category, socially, medically or (especially) politically:

In her speech at the Washington Women’s Match in January,
Gloria Steinem remarked that for the first time in history, there are now
fewer women than men in the world. I haven’t dug into the data, but it seems
like a reasonable extrapolation from a trend first analysed by Amrtya Sen in
the 1990’s. Back then Sen estimated that there was at least one hundred million women missing from the world – aborted before birth, killed in infancy, or dead through differential parental investment in food and medical
care. There is no reason to suppose that number has not continued to grow in the intervening decades. While Steinem’s point went very much uncommented on, it speaks to an absolutely monumental shift in human
demography. Men’s greater propensity to violence through war, as well as the greater spontaneous miscarriage rate of mal fetuses and the greater vulnerability of male neonates to disease, has always kept th ebalance of male to female people in the world more or less even (despite the fact that more male embryos are conceived than female ones). In the present day, a combination of economic and medical progress, coupled with absolutely no meaningful progress in the eradication of woman-hating, is tipping that balance: turning women into a minority as well as a disadvantaged group. The consequences of this are hard to predict, and probably don't belojng in this post; but there is no question that they will be extraordinary.

It seems to be almost too obvious to need pointing out
that dowry is a social construct; son preference is a social construct;
sex-selective abortion is a social construct; and patriarchy as a whole is a
social construct, Goddess help us. But anyone who can sit at the tippy-top of human
safety and luxury, the historical 0.1% of all humans since the pleystocene, and
lecture others that medical classification is actual violence, is just going
to shrug their shoulders and say that people shouldn’t do bad things anyway, so it's not their problem. Fine.

However. Here’s what I think anyone pushing the “sex is a social
construct and therefore it is up to me to decide if my reproductive organs are
male or female” has an absolute moral duty to account for: if sex is not a
“real” and meaningful political or economic category, on what basis did the
parents of the hundreds of millions of women and girls lost to femicide know who
to kill? This is not state mandated, low-resolution social engineering: each
individual family, each individual father, and sometimes mother, has made a
decision to abort this baby, but not that baby. Each individual village midwife
or grandmother or mother in law in a village somewhere has decided to take this
child and leave them by the side of the road to die, but not that child. These
people are not scientists and they are certainly not feminists. They didn’t get
their decisions out of a Janice Raymond book, so give me a fucking break, use your educated-beyond-its-capability brain for a second and
think about it: if sex doesn’t really exist, how do they know who to kill?

The organised killing of girl children is the greatest act of
murder in the history of humanity. No one has ever suffered more deliberate
elimination than the female neonate; not Jews, not soldiers in the WWI
trenches, nobody. It’s not genocide, because it is not an organised crime aimed
at eliminating a particular national group in order that a collective “Us”
should fare better. In some ways it’s worse than genocide, because each individual killing is
intimate, private, a unique rejection: I, me this real person in the world, do
not wish you, a potential or existing individual, to exist. The
hatred is tiny in each case, maybe not even a hatred at all, just a small
preference, a little nudge in a particular direction. And it has a basis. Is
that basis justified? Of course not. Is that basis immutable, or always diagnosed
correctly at first? Possibly, given the state of modern medicine, not. But does
that basis exist? Yes, yes it does. Because none of these killings are random.

Let’s say we live in some future world in which “gender
identity” has been identified as a real determining factor in physical and
psychological development, instead of the politically instrumentalised subjective feeling we
have every reason to believe it to be today. Imagine that in that world it is
possible to measure the gender identity of an embryo in utero, like it is
possible to examine their physical characteristics with ultrasound today. Do the
people who parrot the “sex is a social construct” cliché as if it were some
clinching “gotcha!” believe that in that world, those who practice femicide
today would agree to base their candidates for selective abortion or
infanticide on that reading, rather than the characteristics of the body? Never
mind whether that would make the mass murder OK. Just answer: do you think the
same people who kill girl children today will agree to switch to killing only
girl-identified children instead?

It's a rhetorical question. Nobody who is sufficiently invested in sex discrimination and the devaluing of women to kill babies gives a shit how you identify.

The obscenity of sitting on top of the technological,
economic and medical heap and lecturing those below that a thing that is
responsible for the deaths of literal hundreds of millions of women and girls in our world today should no longer be counted as a thing that exists because you’re
clever enough to have read the words “social construct” in some A Level paper
is beyond my ability to describe in words. I have nothing but contempt for the
person who recorded this video and for the self-styled “progressive” Everyday
Feminism team who are providing it with a platform. Brushing aside the most lethal characteristic any human could ever, and can ever possess in order to score some woke cookies off the back of
a few well-meaning white women in rich countries is not feminist. Frankly, it’s
not even really human.

I don't think this argument quite works. You seem to have suggested the counterargument yourself in an earlier paragraph: gender can be "not real" in the world as it is but also "real" inside the minds of the patriarchal oppressors. Just like Nazis and other racists might have crude physical tests to decide whether you belong to a race that they want to genocide, but people can still say today that that race, or any race, is "merely" a social construct and does not "actually" exist in reality. Riley could have been a Jew saying that "belonging to the Jewish race" should "no longer be counted as a thing that exists", and your piece would purport to refute that claim too? I don't see how though.

I mean if you really want to make your political contest fundamentally about the way people want to use words, then good luck... please submit your findings to a journal of analytic philosophy when you're finished.

When you say "You seem to have suggested the counterargument yourself in an earlier paragraph: gender can be "not real" in the world as it is but also "real" inside the minds of the patriarchal oppressors" are you referring to this bit: "if sex is not a “real” and meaningful political or economic category, on what basis did the parents of the hundreds of millions of women and girls lost to femicide know who to kill?" and if not, which paragraph do you mean? Marina S. does not use the word 'gender' here. She uses 'sex'. Can you please explain your point? Thank you.

I've been reading a few essays tracing the history of our understanding of biological sex, and I have a better understanding how social constructions do inform our understanding of our bodies, however just because something is a social construction, doesn't mean it isn't important. Race is entirely a social construction but people are still upset about Rachel Dolezal and other perceived forms of cultural appropriation.

Of course, if people like Riley actually believed sex was a social construction, they wouldn't also argue that gender dysphoric children need medical intervention to prevent them from going through the "wrong puberty."

Your attempt to deny sexual coded DNA constructs aside I would say Bravo! You have successfully assured me I am not the only woman alive on this planet to 'divest' in the constructs of the human minds ignorance toward the 'genocide' of women unilaterally as a 'pretence' to war on the minds of women.

The rape of our intelligence is not only the cause of hegemonies 'rift' with the feminine minds 'right' not to promote utter hogwash as to what is DNA's consequence for the human minds despicable approach to what is a 'gender neutral' concept not played as Barbies & Kens 'toy dolls' ignorance toward what is common decency toward one another's gender divide.

To call a woman a 'host' as she carries a fetus so as to deny the 'father' the right to be his 'privilege' where it were his 'contempt for the female mind and body' where women were 'robotic automata' claiming the sperm as the 'seed of contrition' for the male populations blindness to its own Viagaras scare...Once again Bravo to you for spelling out the truth of the horror of being a female on this planet.

It reminds me of the movie Cloud Atlas.That is, through the centuries not a thing changes in class consciousness nor the 'right to an equal minds fit' with equalities drivel.

Where it suits men is where the power is played as the 'evil' on this earth plane.What women and girls need is a revolution. Not played out as in the old boys club way.

Power is 'within' as an internal disguise not vetted by even other women's hang onto 'patriarchies clothes tail of the mans deceit' of his own minds 'fake it until women someone how agree to own and promote social constructs ...

Such as cutting off the clitoris of young girls...where they were in fear of being the cattle's 'sheep to the slaughter' if they do not participate in disowning the cultural barbaric practices keeping them enslaved for centuries as to our niqabs similarity.

Women are truly their own worst enemies. Why not instead promote a new game... played by women for women about women. Let men die in their own graves.

No 'host' were a parasites claim to any environments friendliest claim to a neutral territory not found in spaces time.

Why not have women deny men any 'privilege' as to their access to our minds, hearts nor bodily functions. Sex is the de-neutered 'tool' of aggressions oppression. Why do women give men this power?

Common sense. No decency is gained by allowing any mans penis in your 'bodily sanctity' if and when a man denies any woman her 'right to be a human first' regardless of social constructs in any language. Language connoisseurs do not blame the writer for the words misspelling unless the 'content is fluff or not of value' to the reader.

Nothing is more and or less engaging in any societies 'thought' patterns then when a woman blames a man for her 'distinction' where she did not fit with our own minds intellect.

Why not call a spade a spade. Women should stand and be counted instead of hiding behind 'cultural practice and barbaric terrorism.'

Read the rest of the article at Flora's blog barbie-not-kens-toy.blogspot.ca

I don't how you equate a woman having sex with a man as giving him any power, unless you subscribe to some false Castenada propaganda on the subject, which I don't see any evidence for. There is quite some valid criticism of him & his ilk. Perchance are you diverting from what's actually going on behind the scenes & the manipulations of other factions of the situation?

Thee male club business is out of control, though it must be said, there are still many aspects of influence such can have in female spaces.

I do not see women as their own enemies at all & making such a blithe generalisation shows such a limited understanding of the situation. Though you are trying to push a false "plant" story & a car objectification myth. Not to mention another layer of music industry history, which again is not correct to the situation. Seems like you're part of the let's crucify her Church spellwork constellation?If anything should be clear now it's that blood sacrifice don't change matters a bit & false stories in old books, much edited are about pursuing the establishments power interests.

This is not a game.

Sex can have many layers.

And you cannot know what a human being may really think, or the other complexities of what can be going on in the complexities of consciousness & all those that might intrude. Time can reveal some of that.

I don't see any hiding going as far as I am concerned.

A doll joke, like many other jokes has no bearing on reality, yet you are so desperate to make an attack on anything you can, perhaps a Hitler instinct governs your morality?

Fantastic, thank you! We have fallen down the rabbit hole indeed. It is beyond galling for this 21st century pig to mansplain to us inferior women with our lady brains what it is to be female. Typical narcissistic male supremacist. At this point the obsession they have in wanting to control women has cannibalized them.

But it is amazing that it needed to take women this long - and for men to have made it as obvious as they have made it now - for us to finally figure out what their problem (and all that misogyny) has been about all along.